misfortune...

Yay, I've been slapped with a summon for illegally obstructing the driveway.

Time to strike 4D toto lottery, whatever they call it.

connaught avenue...

My first brush of shoulders with Connaught Avenue's developer, Akisama Enterprise, was back in late 2006 when I visited their show unit for Kuchai Avenue. I was pretty impressed with their finishings and pricing, especially that the locations they acquired are usually pretty strategic.

And when I saw a banner erected at Jalan Cheras on their latest development, Connaught Avenue Service Apartments, I decided to visit the show unit to take a peek at what they have to offer this time.

To put it briefly, Connaught Avenue is located beside Econsave and will take up the location which currently The Challenger Futsal Centre sits. A leasehold land with 99 years (starting from 2009), with a total land area of 8.66 acres, more than half of the land taken up by 2-storey shop-lots that will be completed together in end of 2011.

One thing unique about Akisama's residential properties is that they always come up with only one type of lay-out, regardless of how many units there are. Connaught Avenue will have 385 units of service aparments spread in two blocks, which makes it about 193 units per block. Having stayed in D'aman Ria with over 400 units in a single block, personally I think this will be quite low in density.

I've always been impressed with what Akisama offers together with the units they sell, back then when I visited Kuchai Avenue, they were selling at RM15X,XXX per unit of 935sf, inclusive of fully furnished bathrooms and 2x2 tiles. I visited the show unit pretty late, and at that time there were only 2 units left, and they even offered 2 units of air-conds to close the deal. Let's just say I passed the offer and now I live to regret the decision. ; )

Anyway, last weekend was Connaught Avenue's soft launch, and it was already Sunday when I finally went, and boy their sales certainly impressed me. Soft launch for the first block with about 190 units, 70% were already taken up by the time I reached (around 1 noon).

What not, with their starting price of RM180,500 for a 950sf unit, I'd say it's pretty affordable especially since it's in a location with mature residential lands surrounding it. And to top the offer, the bathrooms come fully furnished together with plaster ceiling, and now they include built-in wardrobes for all three bedrooms and the kitchen cabinets! Not forgetting that the maintenance fee is 0.13 cents per sf, that adds up to less than RM140 monthly including the sinking fee (which btw, will be waived for the first two years).

I'll leave it to your decision whether this is going to be a good development or not. I have my opinions, but I'd rather listen to others on how they see Connaught Avenue.

: )

confusion...

I'm trying very hard to find flaws in common financing packages, I'm sure there's a common practice amongst investors where they get to finance properties 100% but in reality the loan agreement says 90% margin of finance in black and white. The banker values your property higher than the transacted price, and the bank approves 90% loan according to the bank's valuation.

But considering that the bank will require all the necessary documentations of the transaction and SPA, how on earth do one get away with the inflated price to acquire a higher loan amount than he/she is supposed to get?

Even if this works, how do we claim the extra cash from the bank when they help you to pay off to the vendor? Doesn't the money go straight to the vendor? If not, then do the bank transfer the loan to your own account? Which didn't really happen during my first experience in properties. So how does the money go about here?

And if it's a common practice, do the loan packages include zero entry cost, or just plain loans for the property value? If the package can include the likes of MRTA and such, then surely the loan wouldn't be the exact '90%' but higher. So how does the bank calculate the loan amount when the transacted price is totally flawed on purpose in the first place?

I must've missed something very important along the way. Surely there's a way to explain all these.

I hate it when something bothers me this much.

valentine's home-made dinner...

Well, considering that a close friend is having his wedding dinner on Valentine's this year, we've brought forward our Valentine's plans to Friday night.

And considering that the lady of the night is under strict diet control following consultations with her colleagues, we ended up cooking our own Valentine's dinner.

Which wasn't so bad.

Grilled Salmon with tartar sauce

Campbell's cream of mushroom

Black pepper grilled chicken with bacon

Mirinda's orange

While wedding is a good excuse to skip a fancy restaurant dinner outside, to be honest Valentine Dinner sets are always a cut-throat to your pocket. A dinner like the above could've cost us like, what, RM300++?

It was a good dinner at home on the eve of Valentine's, which we both think was spent pretty well.

A very belated Happy Valentine's Day to all!

bye bye hoglets...

Well, I was supposed to blog about my Valentine dinner, or ZH's wedding, whichever, but unfortunately the camera's not with me and the photo images are yet to be transferred to the computer, so I'm blogging about something else in the meantime.

On the night of ZH's wedding, someone called up and expressed serious interest in purchasing my last hedgehog on the same night, and after much hesitation (it's Valentine's Day and a close friend's wedding for Pete's sake!), I finally decided to have the deal done, and my last hoglet finally left to a new owner's home at 12.30am. : )

While I would say that breeding hedgehogs wouldn't really give you very good profit, at least it has covered up my expenses when I first started rearing. But anyway, it isn't really for all the money; nobody gets rich by breeding livestocks and selling them, personally it has been a wonderful 4 months I have had watching the hoglets grow from an inch long into the size of my palm. I'm just glad to find a hobby which can give me a little return in cash to be 'reinvested' to my hobby.

I've mated my pair of hedgehogs last week and hopefully this round, I'd be able to breed the mother's colour which didn't happen in the last batch of hoglets.

On a different topic, I've finally put the pen on paper for another investment, ending my 6-month monitoring and research, and three weeks of continuous negotiation. Now it's time to shift my attention to another location and begin the tedious works all over again.

Next post will be either Valentine's or ZH's wedding. : )

wedding bells on february 14...

It's Valentine's Day this Saturday and I will officially NOT celebrate on February 14th. No thanks to my life-long brother's biggest day of his life.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Oh well, I can celebrate Valentine's a day earlier.

Anyway, this is going to be great experience, a church wedding in the city. I've never been to one before.

Okay, I lied. I've been to one before. But that's my lecturer's wedding which was held in the church she frequently attends. Which is located in a residential area. So it's different okay?

Back to the wedding, so it's going to be a double celebration every year from next year onwards. Anniversary on Valentine's huh? That's gonna be a bit corny, but hey, it saves the guy from having to remember another anniversary date, no? And one present for two celebrations.

That's cunningly smart. Sorry bro but I've exposed your plans here,.hahaha...

false alarm...

Damn it, when things look like they're too good to be true, then it's too good to be true.

I guess it wasn't really heaven, just a pile of clouds in the sky.

Oh well, better luck next time.

CIMB's BLR drops today!

And it's all great news!

Ah, it's like all the best things that can happen today happened!

I'm in heaven!

back from break...

I'm back!

Well, yeah, something like that. So I was hanging out in Butterworth for the last few days (hence my disappearance from the cyberworld), and started my early morning drive back to KL at 4am just in case we get stuck in traffic, but the journey was pretty smooth all the way back home.

Supposed to take a nap now to regenerate, was up all night, but I guess it should be alright to drop a line here just before I hit the lights off.

Hope everyone had a terrific festive season for the past week, and get your ass back to work tomorrow! ;)